Mixers - Are we the product?

[dothebeats]

Like the traditional money laundering schemes, they do need a front to look legit and 'clean' in a lot of ways (albeit being loud of what they actually do).

They wanted clean coins to trade with their dirty ones in order to continue their operations in the darknet. They cater to customers that 'actually wants to stay hidden,' while the rest of us clearnet folks use mixers because we think it saves us our privacy.

Personally, I think those who wish to mix their coins are still fine with using exchanges and converting to another currency and sending it out to another completely unrelated address. It shows the trail, but it cuts off after the currency was exchanged to another one. Sure, the exchange might have it, but if you are a regular user not really looking to launder money using small amounts, what reason do these exchanges have to report you to authorities anyway?

I've been a fan of mixers before, but now that I understand that this is all just a front for criminals to get a taste of freshly minted coins in exchange for their tainted ones, I'm trying to stay away from them as much as possible.

[alani123]

It's interesting that one of the biggest busts with money laundering was a crypto exchange almost no one had heard of, bizzlato. But somehow many of these funds seem to be related. Darknet markets are probably very closely associated with these fronts and mixers are likely no exception to the whole business of laundering with crypto.

[EarnOnVictor]

It's interesting that one of the biggest busts with money laundering was a crypto exchange almost no one had heard of, bizzlsto. But somehow many of these funds seem to be related. Darknet markets are probably very closely associated with these fronts and mixers are likely no exception to the whole business of laundering with crypto.

bizzlsto? I've never heard of it, and of course, it can be popular here if they are not campaigning. Personally, I do not use m!xers for any service, I know how to work my way around my privacy when it comes to cryptocurrency. Also, like me, I do not expect many people to know many of them. However, the quick investigation I made showed that they are not from an English-speaking country, and neither did they offer their services in English, and it was seized by a non-English-speaking country's law enforcers as well, at least the official language (Europe).

Such M!xer can't be so popular like those of the English-speaking ones, and they don't have any presence on the internet according to my searches either. This means that the darknet must have been their primary place to operate and market and it could only have solely been for evil deeds from the beginning to the end with this setup.

[hugeblack]

This really does make you think, WHY? Why would a service allegedly moving billions worth in proceeds need to advertise here, and so aggressively even, especially when their customer base seems to be set in stone from day one?

The forum is the ideal place to promote such services, and the target audience is not the individuals inside the forum, but those who read the comments in it. For example, I read comments in many forums without having an account in that forum. This audience will add new Bitcoins to the mixer, and managing the mixers does not require a lot of expenses. In addition to network and hosting fees, mixers do not cost anything.

[davis196]

What's the point then, of using a mixer, when your funds can be traced so easily? Do its methods of mixing really work, or could it be that this is intended functionality for someone to get the short end of the stick?

This is all just a theory of course, but honestly, trust no one, not even me.
It's a very real possibility though, that with mixers, we might be the product.

I've always asked myself the same question during the last few years.
I mean, we have private altcoins like Monero. What's the point of using a BTC mixer then? Can't the people, who want to hide the origin of their wealth just dump BTC mixers completely and use privacy altcoins? I also believe in the conspiracy theory that CIA has control over some of the BTC mixers, so it can easily track the movement of illegal BTC funds.
I don't agree about your theory that "we are the product". What do you mean by "we"? I have never used a BTC mixer in my entire life.
I have only participated in a signature campaign launched by a BTC mixer two years ago. The people, who are actively using BTC mixers are "the product", not me.

[348Judah]

Mixers will always be seen and attacked this way because they are centralized, this is the only weapon that can be used together against them, but does that means they are not safe for our usefulness, obviously no, what we are going after is the privacy and they have come to the conclusion that the bad actors who also uses such mean for a stollen funds transfer are the ones affecting us, we cannot boldly concludes that there's no worst of it kind with the use of fiat currency than we have in bitcoin transactions.

[bbc.reporter]

Instead, an illusion of privacy was promoted to clearnet users (that's us here in bitcointalk), while in fact our "cleaner" funds were used to bail out real criminals and terrorists. Because to a mixer, a clean bitcoin, is worth more than market value, so they were willing to overpay for it in the form of advertising. Come to think of it, the recent bust of Sinbad served as a reminder that mixers are in fact very traceable.

This is a very interesting theory.

Do you mean Mixers are in your theory used to replace bad money of criminals with good money from the innocent?

As in there is a pool of criminal money and every Mixing Transaction is pretty much,
Innocent sends 0.5 Bitcoin from legitimate source to Mixer
Mixer sends back 0.5 Bitcoin from criminal source to Innocent

And that they advertised on Bitcoin Talk so they could get rid of more criminal money while bringing in more Innocents?

I never thought of this.  If that is the case, ban Mixers.  But then how difficult is it to get Bitcoin from Innocents?  Bisq, Monero Atomic Swaps et cetera can all be ways of doing this.  A criminal with BILLIONS can open up a seemingly legitimate Blockchain Analysis tool particularly to artificially 'clean' their own criminal Bitcoin by bypassing the filters.  Or they could bribe already existing Blockchain Analysis companies to bypass the filters.

I do not think this is the case but interesting outlook.

Agreed. However, it might be a mistake to speculate if this is the case or not. We should be speculating on how high or how low is the possbility that this might be in our reality or not. If someone in the forum like @alani123 can think and speculate on something like this, it might also be very much possible that there are other people who have also thought about this before anyone of us in the forum.

I am not saying that this is presently the case, however, if much of these different mixers are owned by a moneylaundering ring, it might be possible.